While we’re focusing on the American election, interesting things are happening in Germany—and they reflect deep dissatisfaction with the current government’s immigration policies (open borders for Islam) and its green policies (the destruction of Germany’s once-thriving manufacturing sector). What’s especially fascinating is one of the biggest political changes is coming from the left, in the form of the Sahra Wagenknecht Party.

I’m not particularly current on Germany’s political scene and I’ve always found its parliamentary system confusing. There’s also the problem of European nomenclature regarding the terms “left” and “right,” so let’s start with those.

The terms “left” and “right” originated during the French Revolution, when the revolutionary members of parliament sat to the speaker’s left while the monarchy-supporting members sat to the speaker’s right. The former wanted a change to the system; the latter wanted to maintain the status quo.

However, none imagined liberty as we do in America, and that’s true despite the revolutionaries’ motto of “liberty, brotherhood, and equality.” Both sides were about control, and that’s continued to be how the system works in Europe. The American notion of liberty, which is freedom from government, is not a European concept, where “left” and “right” mean pure communism versus less pure communism.

Image: Sahra Wagenknecht. YouTube screen grab.

That less pure communism actually began in Germany under Otto von Bismarck, when he had the government start state welfare, the first of its kind in world history. To appreciate what’s happening in Germany now, it’s important to understand that Germans have had soft socialism for 140 years.

Bismarck hoped that this social safety net would keep the real socialists out of power. He never intended to embrace all the tenets of socialism. His goal was to retain the traditional social and political structure, complete with obedience to the church and the monarchy. He failed in this goal but it still wove itself into Germany’s warp and woof.

Since WWII, Germany’s politics have seesawed between leftism and conservativism—but, again, you must remember that conservativism has always been soft socialism, not America-style liberty. The government is in charge.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was raised in the former Eastern Germany under hard socialism, complete with the secret police and total government control. When she was chancellor, she governed under the banner of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, which was called center-right but which, by American standards, is pretty left. (Are you still with me?)

It was Merkel’s government that opened Europe to the Muslim invasion that began in 2015 and continues to this day. That invasion, and the crime it begat, is one of the reasons that Italy voted in an anti-immigration “conservative.” (The nomenclature issue is the same in Italy as it is in Germany.)

Currently, Germany’s Chancellor is Olaf Scholz, an open leftist. He came into office in 2021 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which is even more pro-immigration than Merkel was.

All these governments, of course, have been all-in on the whole “green” scheme. This has meant destroying Germany’s hydrocarbon-based energy output in favor of “green” energy. In 2021 (the same year Scholz took over Germany), the government had to instruct people about how to make heaters out of flower pots using candles to offset the constant brownouts they were experiencing.

Although it’s been 35 years since the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was reunified, there are still differences between the two sides of Germany. For purposes of this post, the most important is that the former East Germans vividly remember totalitarianism, which saw the government control them so tightly that even their vocabulary had to conform to government mandates. Thanks to political correctness, the current government still mandates thought and language controls.

Saxony and Thuringia were once part of East Germany, and they created an earthquake on the German political scene this weekend during regional elections:

Berlin’s three governing parties received a combined total of around 10-13% of the vote. Meanwhile, the Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured over 30% of the vote in both states, becoming the first party in Thuringia. Despite this strong showing the party remains isolated, as no other party is willing to form a coalition with it. This leaves the AfD in a paradoxical position: popular, but unable to translate its success into political power.

The main opposition party, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), maintained its hold on Saxony by a tiny margin.

[snip]

The CDU now finds itself weakened, unable to form coalitions without compromising its traditional stances or striking alliances that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. One such possible alliance is with the newly formed Left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — an option that is currently being explored by both parties. Incredibly, the BSW is now the third-largest party in both states: an impressive feat for a party that was launched just a few months ago.

So, what are the AfD and the BSW? Well, the AfD is painted as “far right,” a term that can mean anything from “not communist” to Nazi. (Ignore that the Nazis were fascist socialists as opposed to the socially acceptable communist socialists. Nowadays, Nazi is a shorthand for German white supremacists.) In this case, the AfD is actually both “not communist and Nazi.”

The AfD party espouses German nationalism and opposes immigration, purportedly supports democratic elections, opposes climate madness, and dislikes the EU. So far, so good. None of those things means that the AfD has to go full Nazi and kill Jews, gypsies, or homosexuals while seeking world domination. However, leaders of the AfD (e.g, Björn Höcke) are Holocaust deniers. So, while their country is flooded with Muslims who seek sharia control, they do the German thing and go after the Jews.

It appears that the AfD’s wins in Saxony and Thuringia weren’t about Jews, though, but were about opposing governing coalition and having had a snootful of illegal immigration, the destruction of Germany’s traditional culture, and the “green” war on the industrial sector.

The BSW is an even more interesting party, especially because it’s only a few months old: It basically harkens back to Otto von Bismarck. Sahra Wagenknecht was always a hardcore leftist, but she now wants a socialist economy with a traditional culture. I wouldn’t be surprised if her party isn’t the last party standing in a year or so.

The Democrat party should be worried about what’s happening in Germany. It turns out that, even in a country with a very limited history and understanding of liberty, when people get the chance, they will vote out those who flood their country with people whose values are antithetical to theirs, who destroy the economy in service to the “green” ideology, and who mandate woke thought control.

If you’re interested, this video offers a deeper dive into the election: